ltlredwagon

Thank you, Charon. You’re being very circumspect, and I appreciate that. 40% of the respondents in the Nature survey above cited “fraud”, while 70% cited “selective reporting”. It would be difficult to ascertain how much of this selective reporting was “willful misrepresentation”, which, as you point out, “From an outside view, it is difficult to tell, of course.” I suspect that where the money is big (in phamaceuticals, for example: https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/nejmsa065779), selective reporting fraud is not that uncommon. You note, "ultimately the system is (slowly) self-correcting." Well, I suppose that's another thread entirely. Sorry if I’ve belabored the point. I’ll end off. Appreciate your comments and others.

It's a problem in multi-variable logic. Solutions agreeable to most will vary, depending upon the specifics. The OP offers a general situation which, as such, has no right or wrong answer. But the discussion is valuable and I'm appreciating the answers of others.

Good point Klaynos. Money, a reward and a temptation forever it seems. John Ioannidis, in his now famous article (infamous for some) and many others have cited this problem (https://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.0020124). Two different “methods”? Then show both, if only commenting briefly on the failed method – the glue made this way was sticky for joining paper and wood only, but made this way, with the same ingredients, it was very sticky for paper, plastic, and metal. But this does not go to the heart of the selective reporting issue, which in my view is essentially this: did you deceive others, did you lie, using the oldest and hardest-to-discover method around, which we all learned as children, long the stock-in-trade of journalists and politicians – hide information; what is not there “doesn’t exist”. I believe that would be fraud. In other words, “selective reporting”, as I understand it, is simply fraud. Or my understanding is wrong.

Thank you Charon. Then perhaps "selective reporting", as you describe it, is too broad a term, simply the wrong phrase. What then might be a better term for when researchers "suppress negative or undesirable findings"? Is there another term for this specifically, or, in clear cases of this, should we simply avoid any hint of sophistry or euphemism and simply call it “fraud,” in its generally understood sense? (the American Heritage Dict. on my phone says it’s “a deception deliberately practiced in order to secure unfair or unlawful gain.”) But to your point, if I’m following you, there may be instances of, if you will, honest “selective reporting” done with the intention of not unnecessarily muddying an otherwise clear finding. I’m not familiar with scientists or ethicists using the phrase in this manner, but I’ve not read widely on this at all, so I really don’t know.

In it's 2016 report on problems with reproducibility, 70% of scientists surveyed by the journal, Nature (https://www.nature.com/news/1-500-scientists-lift-the-lid-on-reproducibility-1.19970), cited "selective reporting" as a significant problem, while about 40% cited "fraud". My definition of "selective reporting" is as it's given here: “when results from scientific research are deliberately not fully or accurately reported in order to suppress negative or undesirable findings” (https://authorservices.taylorandfrancis.com/an-introduction-to-research-integrity-and-selective-reporting-bias/#:~:text=Selective reporting bias is when,suppress negative or undesirable findings.) Under this definition, is it not fair to state that selective reporting is fraud?